Market Thoughts Archive

The new year started with a serious, 10-20% market correction, but this might be the best time to invest our money. Unexperienced investors often start to panic in situations like this, since they are afraid that they lose their money. They try to sell everything they have, but a true investor thinks just the other way around.

International stock exchanges started the year cloudy, with a pressure from the sell-side. The most important US and European indices fell 10%, while their Chinese counterpart did a 20% flop. The price of crude still continues to lose its value: it fell another 25% lately. This has an effect on the developing countries and their currencies as well: South African Rand and Russian Rouble fell 7-8% and other currencies have weakened compared to USD, too. But this is still quite understandable on a global market that has been rising for six consecutive years.

The biggest U.S. (and other) companies are continually attacked by local governments because they are keeping large amounts of money abroad. The main reason to that is to cut down the taxes they pay, and obviously keep their profits higher. This phenomenon not only exists in the U.S., but the biggest companies there sure know a thing or two about tax optimization: the 500 biggest companies in the U.S. keep a total of $2.1 trillion overseas.

As the price of crude fell under $40, and basically everyone expects further decrease, only the bravest are willing to invest in anything connected to commodities. But for them, this might be the greatest time to invest in some instruments and countries.

Made in China – that is probably the three most used English words in the World, but will this be the case forever? People are so used to say that something was made in China, sometimes they are surprised to find out that the thing they are holding was not produced there. We should get used to this since manufacturing seems to be changing.